Dredging up the past
Dredge places you in the waders of a fisherman (well, fisherman-driven boat) who arrives at the sleepy Greater Marrow. By day, you fish, upgrade your boat, and explore your increasingly bizarre surroundings. By night, Lovecraftian horrors emerge — manifesting in wicked ways and making you question your sanity.
The game balances peaceful and genuinely relaxing fishing mechanics with creeping dread, which is enhanced by a fear system and time-based resource management. Despite its minimalist art style, Dredge is an incredibly deep experience, and you soon realize this through its creeping cosmic horror undertone, which rewards curiosity but punishes recklessness. I really can’t bring myself to give anything else away — anything more would spoil it.
Big adventures on the small screen
The Dredge mobile port is ridiculously good. On my relatively straightforward Google Pixel 7a, it runs like an absolute dream, with no technical problems, and excellent support for headphones to ramp up the tension.
Controls are intuitive, allowing you to control your boat from wherever’s most comfortable on the left side of your screen, while camera controls on the right side aren’t oversensitive. However, while interacting with minigames and your inventory is painless — with surprisingly forgiving hit zones, given how much can be crammed onto the screen — text and button sizes feel a little too small, even for those with good eyesight.
Sadly — for now, at least — there’s no way to adjust the size of text or pop-up menus like your inventory, though it’s something Black Salt Games should look into. It did, however, make me see if playing with a controller made things a little easier. With the CRKD NEO S, there were no problems whatsoever — though chances are you’ll still long for the more simple and intuitive touchscreen inputs if you’ve already tried them out.
It’s a testament to the developers’ work that Dredge feels just as unsettling after its switch from the small screen to the smallest screen. Even without headphones, it’s able to reach inside your mind in a way reminiscent of fellow horror-tinged cellphone title The Room, my favorite mobile game series of all time.
Dredge is an exemplary mobile game, to the point that I could easily see myself spending way more time on it through my Google Pixel than my Xbox — and I really rinsed the base game and DLCs on my console. It’s easy to spend longer sessions on, but thanks to its day/night cycle, you feel comfortable dipping in and out of it, unlike the life-stopping force that is Balatro.
It isn’t cheap… or is it?
Here we are: a near-perfect mobile port of a near-perfect indie game that I’d recommend any newcomer or fan to play. Still, some gamers might balk at its price on the Apple and Google Play stores: (though, at time of writing, it’s a ridiculously cheap .99 as a launch deal).
It’s consistent with PC and console pricing — Apple players can even try the first area for free, which is an understandable offer from Black Salt Games — and it’s worth the money. Mobile games shouldn’t be priced lower simply because they’re on a phone; it’s what they deliver for the price.
I even say this as someone who supports microtransactions on free-to-play games, so long as people get them for the right reasons and find real value. I’ve spent plenty of cash in the past on The Simpsons: Tapped Out (RIP) and, arguably worse, Golf Battle. But neither of these offered a story, atmosphere, or closure like Dredge.
There’s every chance you’ll see a few “best mobile games” lists updating themselves in the coming months — especially if Dredge irons out its UI.
